Crossing The Narrow Bridge

"The world is a very narrow bridge. The main thing is not to be afraid." The joyous, positive message of the outstanding Chassidic luminary, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810) is more relevant & needed than ever. "Crossing the Narrow Bridge" gives clear practical guidance as to how his teachings can be applied in everyday life today. The author, Rabbi Chaim Kramer, is director of the Breslov Research Institute, which for the last eleven years has been publishing authoritative translations of Rebbe Nachman's works in English & French. Rabbi Kramer has drawn on years of intimacy with leading figures in the Breslov Chassidic communities to bring this tradition to the reader in the form of numerous anecdotes & insights. Lively, down to earth, & easy to read, "Crossing the Narrow Bridge" covers all aspects of the Rebbe Nachman's teachings--from faith, simplicity, prayer & meditation to earning a living, health-care & bringing up children, etc. Each of the twenty chapters offers a basic understanding of its topic as seen through Rebbe Nachman's own lessons & stories, together with practical suggestions enabling the reader to translate these teachings into his own life

"Poems about crossing bridges, with an emphasis on the locales of Italy and Sweden"--

“A book that looks at existence with equal measures of fear, humility and gratitude. In a time when novelists tend to be more concerned with psychology than the soul, that makes it a rare and valuable thing.” --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal From the author of Mr. Eternity, a darkly comic road novel about a millennial couple facing the ultimate question: how to live and love in an age of catastrophe. Young Miami couple Murphy and Eva have almost decided to have a baby when Yahweh, the Old Testament God, appears to Eva and makes an unwelcome demand: He wants her to be his prophet. He also wants her to manage his social media presence. Yahweh sends the two on a wild road trip across the country, making incomprehensible demands and mandating arcane rituals as they go. He gives them a hundred million dollars, but he asks them to use it to build a temple on top of a landfill. He forces them to endure a period of Biblical wandering in the deserts of the southwest. Along the way they are continually mistaken for another couple, a pair of North Carolina society people, and find themselves attending increasingly bizarre events in their names. At odds with their mission but helpless to disobey, Murphy and Eva search their surroundings for signs of a future they can have faith in. Through wry observations about the biggest things--cosmology and theology--and the smallest things--the joys and irritations of daily life--Thier questions the mysterious forces that shape our fates, and wonders how much free will we really have. Equal parts hilarious and poignant, The World Is a Narrow Bridge asks: What kind of hope can we pass on to the next generation in a frightening but beautiful world?

They came from different parts of the old British Empire: Alistair Randall from Kenya and Rashid Hassan from India. Perhaps, they should have been enemies, but they were not. It was a defining moment in Alistairs life when he sat on the floor across from Rashid one cold winters day in Edmonton in 1969, and Rashid spoke with unsmiling logic about the need to shoot Alistair. But before that collision there was Jenadie MacIlwaine; without her Alistair would not have met Rashid. Telling a story set mostly on the campus of Capilano College in the 1960s, Crossing Second Narrows narrates the interplay among this unlikely triangle of characters who believed they could change the world: Alistair, the liberal white migr from postMau Mau Kenya; Rashid, the self-styled, dark-skinned Marxist from India; and Jenadie, the outspoken American blonde in the middle. It provides a historically accurate account of the searching for answers to the questions of the times: Why did the conservative universities try to squash innovative upstart community institutions? Why did the students and faculty at British Columbias fledgling Simon Fraser University militantly go on strike? How did these become literally life-and-death issues in a world stripped of its comfortable traditions, including, on occasion, clothing? In Crossing Second Narrows, author Bill Schermbrucker uses what Michael Ondaatje once described as the truth of fiction, to reconstruct an important story out of the heady Age of Aquarius.

Preliminary material -- INTRODUCTION -- DELIMITATION AND MORPHOLOGY OF THE PHENOMENON -- A HISTORICAL FALLACY: THE THEORIES OF THE “RELIGIONSGESCHICHTLICHE SCHULE” -- A CHALLENGE: THE THEORY OF THE GREEK ORIGINS -- THE ORIGINS OF THE APOCALYPTIC GENRE -- THE CELESTIAL ESCHATOLOGY AND ITS TRANSFORMATIONS -- THE MYTHS OF PLUTARCH -- THE PASSAGE OF THE SOUL THROUGH THE SPHERES -- FROM THE JEWISH APOCALYPSES TO THE MI'RAJ -- PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE MEDIEV AL APOCALYPSES -- NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE -- INDEX NOMINUM RERUMQUE.

“Actually, suicidal persons don ́t want to die, they just want to stop living the way they have been up to now.” People who suffer intensely and think about taking their life are experiencing a severe depression and high degree of hopelessness and confusion which darken and limit their vision of life. It is a perspective that only allows them to see death as the solution to heal the suffering their existence has become. Joseluis Canales (Dado) reveals in this book that suicide is not the only solution to pain. The text provides a searing reflection on this tragic subject while offering perspectives to overcome it. This expert on psychotrauma delicately unpacks the intricacies of the act so that those with a suicidal risk can begin to heal their pain and see the life options before them—options which right now seem unassailable. Dado accomplishes, through intelligent and thought-provoking arguments, an intimacy with readers who may be dealing with this life crisis, to help them find an escape from the haziness and confusion enveloping them. “My dream, my hope behind all this work, is that this book falls into the hands of someone that’s considering suicide as the only way out from the hell they are suffering. This person may be you, and perhaps by reading this book you can overcome the existential crisis you are living through, and your life can go on. My fantasy is that someone at suicidal risk unable to imagine that this suffering can be left behind, decides to seek help...Maybe, just maybe, this book can save one life. That life may be yours and because of that and nothing else, it will have been worth it to write this book”—Dado